David E. Harris, trailblazing Black pilot, 89

David E. Harris, a former Air Force flyer who became the first Black pilot for a major U.S. passenger airline in the 1960s after battles by others to enter the industry, including a landmark anti-discrimination claim backed by the Supreme Court, died March 8 at a hospice center in Marietta, Ga. He was 89.

The death was announced by his family and American Airlines, where Harris worked from 1964 to 1994. No specific cause of death was noted.

As Harris rose to captain at American, he became a symbol of Black achievement during the civil rights movement. Within the world of aviation, he was hailed as a trailblazer along with the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II and people such as Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman known to earn a pilot’s license.

Harris always was quick to note that he found a place in the cockpit at American after years of struggles by other Black pilots. “There is no way I should be the first,” he said. “It should’ve happened long before 1964.”

Another former Black aviator from the Air Force, Marlon D. Green, had been hired by Continental Airlines in 1957, but the offer was rescinded. After a six-year court battle, the Supreme Court in April 1963 upheld a decision in Green’s favor by the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission. The high court ruling also sent a wider message to the U.S. airline industry on hiring practices. Green began flying for Continental in January 1965.

Earlier, other Black pilots denied jobs at big U.S. carriers found different roles in the air, including ex-Tuskegee Airmen Perry Young with a helicopter service in the New York area and August Martin flying cargo aircraft.

“The reality is that there were 500 pilots — Tuskegee Airmen — who were qualified for airline jobs when they left the service,” Harris said at an event in 2008.

Timing and fate, however, handed Harris a place in aviation history. He almost dared airlines to take him — just months after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act — by intentionally pointing out his race in applications. “I am married, I have two children and I’m Black,” he recalled that he wrote on his cover letters.

He was turned down by several carriers, he said, before being hired by American on Dec. 3, 1964, two days after he left the Air Force.

The airline’s purported reply to Harris’s application became part of company lore: “We don’t care if you’re black, white or chartreuse, we only want to know, can you fly the plane?”